In today’s Atlanta Journal there was an article that reported that Georgia Department of Education officials were shocked by the state math and social studies tests. You see on the end-of-year CRCT only 20 to 30 percent of the students passed the social studies test, and about 40 percent of the Georgia’s could be held back because they failed the math test (the truth is, they must fail both the math and reading test to be retained).

I know that this is a radical shift from the writing I’ve been doing about the earthquake in China, but this is the season when students have finished taking their high-stakes tests, and the time when departments of education release the results to parents, schools, and the general public. So here are some thoughts on these tests.

This is also the time that the state department “interprets” or tries to explain the results. Now you must understand that the State Superintendent of Schools in Georgia is infamous for suggesting the word “evolution” be banned from the State of Georgia Science Standards. She suggested this several years ago claiming that evolution was simply a “buzz word.” It did not happen mostly because of the hyper-mail and telephone calls she received from around the country.

When test scores go up, officials usually claim that that the standards are being interpreted and taught properly, and the students are meeting expectations. When the score go down, as they did this year in math and social studies, amazing reasons surface: maybe the standards aren’t clear; some of the test questions are just too complicated and difficult. If you listen to students, some of them say, “we never even covered that material in our curriculum.” I’ve always believed that the reasons state level officials give for scores (whether they go up, stay the same, or go down), have little to do with actual day-to-day teaching.

High Jumping
Administrators at the state level typically advise us that these high-stakes tests measure to what degree students have met or not met the standards, and in fact they liken this process to the Olympic sport of high jumping, e.g. raising the bar. Cox and other administrators suggest “if we ‘raise the bar’ or ‘standards’ on the students we might expect a bit of dip (on test scores), before the students soar over the bar. Apparently there was a dip in test scores in social studies and math this year in Georgia. To me this is an annual game played out in cities and states around the country, indeed around the world. See Svein Sjoberg’s critique of the international science testing program, PISA.

But we continue to fool ourselves with these high-stakes tests. They do not provide schools, teachers or students with information that will lead to improved learning. They simply put students in a position being betrayed by schooling when in fact schools should be in the service of students and parents. Over the past 20 years, the standards movement and associated high-stakes testing has led to teachers saying things like, “I used to be a good teacher; now all I do is pass out books, and get students ready for the test.”

What do you think about high-stakes testing? Are students missing the mark on these tests, as in the case of the Georgia results in mathematics and social studies, or have we missed the mark in not applying what we know about motivation, pedagogy, and evaluation?

Alfie Kohn, an outspoken and published critic of high-stakes testing, says this:

A plague has been sweeping through American schools, wiping out the most innovative instruction and beating down some of the best teachers and administrators. Ironically, that plague has been unleashed in the name of improving schools. Invoking such terms as “tougher standards,” “accountability,” and “raising the bar,” people with little understanding of how children learn have imposed a heavy-handed, top-down, test-driven version of school reform that is lowering the quality of education in this country.